B.C. couple cry foul over chicken cull

Disinfection to combat avian influenza could jeopardize farm's organic status

By MARK HUME
Friday, March 26, 2004

ABBOTSFORD -- Chris Croner is wishing he'd lied, because if he had, if he'd hidden his small flock of chickens from the federal agents scouring the avian flu hot zone in the Fraser Valley, his friends Lulu and Nellie might not be facing death now.

"I told the truth. Now I'm going to be punished," a distraught Mr. Croner said yesterday, as he contemplated an edict from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that has condemned to death all the chickens in a high-risk zone near Abbotsford.

When CFIA agents came to his door on March 20 and asked if he had any chickens, he told them he had. They called yesterday to tell him they were coming back to kill them, as part of a drastic attempt to stop the spread of avian flu, first detected last month.

Lulu, Nellie, Jack and Jill and 36 other birds raised by hand and named by Mr. Croner and his partner, Jennifer Cichanovich, are to be rounded up and destroyed along with 265,000 other birds in the area. Some 90,000 have already been killed. Most of those birds were from 10 huge poultry farms, five of which were confirmed to have avian flu outbreaks, but the government's edict is so sweeping it includes all chickens in the zone, even those considered pets.

Mr. Croner, a former road manager for musician Jimi Hendrix and the creator of rocker Frank Zappa's light shows, runs an organic blueberry farm with Ms. Cichanovich.

The couple save "burned-out" chickens from the big poultry farms in the area, rehabilitate them and turn them loose in the blueberry patch to pluck weeds and eat insects.

Their diligent practices have made Matsqui Blue Farms the supplier of some of the most coveted organic blueberries on the West Coast, featured in Starbucks coffee outlets from B.C. to Oregon, and in high-end grocery stores such as Vancouver's Capers Community Markets.

But the outbreak of a highly contagious avian flu in the Abbotsford area, centred on an agricultural plain known as Matsqui Prairie, has doomed the farm's small flock -- and perhaps put at risk the operation's organic certification, because the chicken coop will be disinfected after the birds are killed.

"This could be jeopardized, our whole livelihood. I mean to go back and start over again, you've got to be five years chemically free and this has always been an organic farm. It's a sad situation. We don't know who to talk to or where to turn," Mr. Croner said.

He and Ms. Cichanovich said the most distressing thing for them is that the birds they have come to love will be gassed, and their bodies disposed of by CFIA officials who are systematically working their way through the zone.

"They are our pets," Mr. Croner said.

"We saved them out of chicken barns where they can't even walk because they've been in cages all their lives. We teach them how to walk, and they do all of our weeding in the fields. You know, we are pretty attached to them."

Ms. Cichanovich fought back tears as she described growing up on the farm where she was born and which she inherited from her father.

"I've been raising chickens here since I was a kid," she said. "They are burned-out chickens when we get them; . . . some don't even have feathers. Now they are so beautiful . . . they are our workers; they are our pals. We talk to them every day."

Asked if she could imagine her farm without chickens, Ms. Cichanovich gasped.

"It's devastation. I feel like I want to cry," she said.

"If the chickens were sick I'd be all for this. But they came and did blood tests and the chickens are all healthy.

"We are a long way from any of those chicken barns. I don't know why this has to happen."

Mr. Croner said he couldn't believe it when he heard on the news yesterday morning that a chicken kill had been ordered for the six-square-kilometre zone where avian flu had been detected in a cluster of five poultry farms.

"I had to call about eight different people to find out [what's happening]. Nobody wanted to be the leader.

"I ended up talking with this guy and he says, 'Yeah, you're in the zone. We're going to get your chickens, and if you hide them there's a fine . . . and we're going to find them.' It's sad because these are a part of our trip at the farm . . . they are healthy and they lay beautiful eggs."

Cornelius Kiley, regional veterinarian officer for the food inspection agency, said all chickens in the zone are to be killed. "No exceptions," he said.

Pet birds will be spared, but the agency's definition of pets is narrow.

"Pet birds that are strictly pet birds, that are within the home, like budgies and canaries, they are not part of the order. They are not known to be a part of the problem, the world over, in dealing with avian influenza. They are not considered to be a risk But outside chickens that exist in outside flocks, then they are part of the order," Dr. Kiley said yesterday.

Asked why healthy birds are being killed, he replied: "We have five farms that are a grouping of farms together, where we now know that this avian influenza virus has spread. We have depopulated four of those farms, and the fifth farm will begin this afternoon The decision made yesterday, in full co-operation with the industry, was to pre-emptively remove these birds as a potential fuel for further spread of the virus.

"This is a control measure that has been taken, which is consistent with how avian influenza has been tackled in other parts of North America and the world over."

Mr. Croner said he is still hoping that someone will intervene to save his flock.

"This is going to be really sad for us when they come and take these birds away," he said.